


the double

by ladyrose (orphan_account)



Category: Red Dead Redemption (Video Games)
Genre: 19th Century, Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Behavior, Canon-Typical Violence, Doppelganger, Drama, F/M, Families of Choice, Gen, Grief/Mourning, High Honor!Arthur and Low Honor!Arthur exist at the same time in the same verse, Other, Paranormal, Period Typical Attitudes, Psychological Drama
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-04
Updated: 2019-10-16
Packaged: 2020-11-23 05:02:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,803
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20886536
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/ladyrose
Summary: There’s a man and a dog following Arthur.Never close enough to see proper, but close enough to give him a bad feeling.He’s the only one that can see them. Until he isn’t.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> PLEASE READ:
> 
> This story features period typical (19th century) attitudes, as I have tagged, on mental health and societal views on mental health (specifically on over exhaustion and grieving and how it can manifest). I did a bit of research on these historical views to try and make it sound believable while still being a ghost au.
> 
> As such, I have taken as much care as I could when having characters address this without coming across as insensitive to a modern, more knowing, audience, and any views aren’t shared by me, the author. If you have a question or something you think I ought to switch wording to, please let me know.
> 
> Also I switched some timeline things around so Bill and Swanson are present here. Arthur is 26.
> 
> Thank you.
> 
> ladyrose  
tumblr: morgan-arthur

Above his head, a roll of thunder.  


A growling threat of a storm that reverberated through Arthur’s rib cage and rattled his things on the crate beside him. A streak of lightning briefly lit up the house and the woods holding them. 

Arthur held his breath and counted the seconds, and another roll of thunder came. This time, with the gentle patter of rain.

He couldn’t sleep. A fact he accepted maybe an hour or so ago. He put it off on new surroundings. Or nerves. Then the storm came, and he figured it was something in the air that kept his mind alert and the hairs on his arms stand on end.   


That was it.

_Had_ to be.

The storm, the old house...

And not the stranger and his wolf dog following their party and lurking ever outside of Arthur’s peripheral.

Sighing, he sits up. Rubs his eyes with the heels of his palms and creeps across the room to the door, carefully avoiding the creakier of the floorboards less he wakes the others.

He made the mistake of telling Dutch about the stalker. The night before they flew out of Missouri with the full might of the law on their tails. Dutch had studied his face, grin melting into a look of earnestness as he realized Arthur wasn’t, in fact, joking. He had turned halfway, looking around the room of the hotel he shared with Hosea as though the stalker in question lurked just in the shadows. Turning back to Arthur with one dark eyebrow arched.

“How long?”

Arthur swallowed, a knot of air lodging somewhere between the back of his throat and nose. He looked down at his boots. Dutch leaned down close enough to knock foreheads with him trying to meet his eye.

“Arthur?” He asked softly, the smell of his cologne suddenly too heavy and nauseating. “How long?”

“Few days after they died,” he whispered.

The house, now, is silent. Eerily so.  


The rain outside turning into a downpour as Arthur descended the stairs, making for the largest room on the ground level, turned for their purpose into a meeting place of sorts. They had brought in the supplies and dragged a table from another room and a few chairs in. There was a fireplace, though they didn’t light it less the smoke gave them away. 

Arthur grabbed his jacket off the hook by the base of the stairs and had it half on when his heart leapt in his throat upon realizing he wasn’t alone. 

Reverend Swanson  sat with his back to him at the table. Feet propped up on a chair angled across from him and flask held loosely between his thin fingers.  


Arthur rolled his eyes, crossing the distance and pulling the flask free before it fell. Swanson flinched, feet dropping with a thud to the floor and eyes wildly searching the room before settling on Arthur with fond recognition.

“Oh,” he said. “It’s just you.”

“What’re you doing up?” Arthur asked, setting the flask on the table and pulling a box of cigarettes out from the depths of his coat pocket. “Thought you and Susan went to bed first.”

“Couldn’t sleep. Between you and I, Arthur, this place gives me the creeps.”

“Makes two of us,” Arthur mutters, lighting a cigarette and closing his eyes as the warm smoke filled his chest. When he opened them again, Swanson was watching him with a look too sober to be...well, _right_. 

“What?”

“You still seeing him?” Swanson asked, tilting his head. “That man? And his dog?”

“Saw ‘em before we left, yeah.”

“You never told me what he looked like.”

“His back is always to me. I couldn’t say.”

“Mmm,” Swanson hums, propping his feet back up on that chair. He doesn’t say anything else and Arthur takes it as a blessing, pulling a chair free at the opposite end of the table and settling into it uncomfortably.

“Some folk would call it a gift,” Swanson muses to the ceiling. “What it is you got.”

“Anybody who’d think that is a damned fool, Swanson.”

“Maybe,” Swanson agreed. 

Sometimes Arthur wondered why he confided to the reverend first, of all people. 

Threaten him enough, and he might’ve told you it was because the man was the least likely to tell a tale and have it be believed. But that was a half truth, and Arthur was good at half truths. Kept him alive this long, after all. No, the real reason is because it was an accident. 

It was Swanson who found him shaking that afternoon back in Illinois, back to a literal wall, and looking for all the world to be in the throes of something out of anyone’s hands.  


It was Swanson who held him with a foreign firmness by the shoulders and ordered him to focus on him.  


On the bench just across the street. 

On the cloudless sky, or the church steeple over the tree tops. 

Something. 

_Anything_ tangible. 

It helped. 

Arthur broke down and told him everything. 

He watches him now across the table, illuminated by the moonlight, and says, “I told Dutch.”

“What did he say?”

“Nothin’ really. He asked me how long and I...I told ‘im. He stayed up that whole night keeping watch. He never seen him.”

Arthur pauses, taking a long drag on his cigarette and tapping the ash on the table. 

“You think I’m making this up?”

“No.”

“You never seen him either...”

“I still don’t think you’re making it up.”

“Then what is this?”

“Just one of those things,” Swanson says, idly tracing the edge of his flask. “You want some?”

“No, thanks.”

“One of those things. That’s all. Not everything in our world can be explained.”

“That’s...worrisome.”

Another crash of thunder came, this time rattling the house and making both men jump a little. Outside, in the dark shadow of the tree-line, Arthur watched as one shadow moved low to the ground like. Shift around the brush, and then take off into flight. An owl. 

“I think,” he says. “I will have some of that drink o’ yours now.”

* * *

He rode rear.

He liked riding rear because it afforded him time to think in relative quiet. 

Somewhere ahead, just around the bend of the trail, he could hear the groan of the wagon wheels turning on the axis and Johns voice, cracking through some song he knows only the chorus to. 

The wind cards through the forest around them, down the hills surrounding them with the gentleness of a friend, and the trees sigh in response in a way that sounds almost human. This kind of weather in its gray cold was always the warmest to him, before. Sat around a campfire or holed up in an abandoned house somewhere in Nebraska with his found family. But now there’s an edge he can’t quite place. Something jagged and rusty. Rotten. His eyes move up towards the hill on his left of their own volition, and he thinks he sees the pinprick orange glow of a cigar. 

He blinks.

It’s gone.

“Everything looking good?”

He flinches at Dutch’s voice suddenly so close to him, regretting the reaction almost as it happens. 

Dutch is nearly swallowed by his large overcoat, face half concealed with a scarf. Arthur sees when his eyes narrow a fraction and he’s lifting his chin to speak again when he seemingly things better of it and nudges his horse in pace alongside Arthur’s.

“Yeah,” Arthur says. “All’s good.”

“You need me to switch you out with, John?” It’s not a rebuke per se. It stings like one though.

“_No_,” he snaps. Dutch looks at him. “Why?”

“Maybe you need a break is all.”

“I’m _fine_.”

“Alright, son.”

They ride together in a heady silence.  


Johns picked a new song to sing, this one he thankfully knows. Bessie joins in with him. Their voices a might farther now. Dutch doesn’t make any move to speed them up. Almost seems content to drifting back with Arthur. He turns, looks at the rifle across Arthur’s lap, then up to the trees around them and breaks the silence.

“I know,” he says, clearing his throat. “You spoke to me in confidence. About _him_.”

“Mmm.”

“And you know I—I told you I didn’t—“

“See him. I remember.”

“I hope you’ll forgive me for it, but I brought it up with Hosea. Not all of it. I don’t know all of it...”

It’s an invitation and Arthur declines in favor of running his thumb along the barrel of his gun and pointedly looking in the opposite direction.

Dutch sighs.

“He thinks it’s exhaustion.”

“I ain’t exhausted.”

“Not physically, no.”

“He send you back here?”

“I wanted to speak with you alone and sent him ahead. No.”

“There’s not much to explain, I don’t understand it.”

“I know you don’t,” Dutch says softly, eyes the color of faded denim taking an almost pitying look that Arthur finds he can’t quite meet. “But I’d like to know about what you _do_ know.”

Arthur wanted to tell him it was a hard.  


But before it was hard it was unbearable. 

As of late it’s gotten better. Real better actually. He wants to tell him that. That once upon a time he couldn’t go that way or pass a cemetery without thinking about it. He couldn’t look at a woman and a baby on the street without thinking about them. But now he can address it by name and not fall apart when it addressed him back. That’s what he wants to tell Dutch. But that’s not what Dutch wants to hear. He wants to hear the hard parts. He wants to hear the unbearable parts. 

And seeing as it was no longer in his hold, well, Arthur couldn’t give it to him. 

He licks his lips and looks sidelong at Dutch’s expecting face, leaning not so subtly closer over his saddle to catch the words as though somewhere in the story, he’d have an answer.

“When I found the graves,” Arthur says. “It was...well, it was a lot. Going on. In my...head, I mean.”

“Naturally.”

“I had a friend in town. He told me what had been going on. There were three. Two got caught. They swung. One was still out there. And long story short, he was a dead man walking either way, I figured.”

Dutch closes his eyes, nods once. Affords Arthur some privacy by way of looking down and adjusting himself on his saddle.

“So it’s him.”

“No.”

“No?”

“No, he was _there_. I thought maybe Kit had got it wrong and there were four. But he was there. Him and that dog. Just _lurking_ there...”

Arthur trails off, remembering how the figure stood motionless just outside of the thieves makeshift camp, that heady earthy smell enough to turn the strongest of stomachs. It sent a chill up his spine now as it did then. 

“I got back in town, took a back way I knew, and when I stopped, I look up, and he’s there again. Just standing there. It wasn’t right. Freaked me out a bit. Swanson had been coming from somewhere and ran into me. He...helped.”

Dutch hums and Arthur falls silent. 

Somewhere ahead, Hosea calls out. Bill found something. A town. A sense of life in a dying forest.

“Come on,” Dutch orders.

Arthur follows.

* * *

The town calls itself Cambridge and they stop about a mile, a mile and a half outside of it.

There’s no more talk of ghosts for the time being. Or at least not Arthur’s ghost. Bill whispers bogus stories still, late in the evenings. From his days back in the war and even after. Of harbingers and spirits walking the camps in the middle of the night. Soldiers seeing themselves in the distance and falling victim to the war the following day. [1]

They have the makings to being good stories, but Bill has a penchant for dragging his voice and rolling his eyes so theatrically, Hosea and Arthur can’t help but snicker behind their cups.  


John is a different case. 

Eating up every word with wide eyes and creeping up on Arthur later that night because his bedroll was too dirty or too water logged and he was only _wondering_—for the evening—if he could stay with him.

It was a return to normalcy. 

Doubled so when Bill returned from the town with news that none of their faces were plastered everywhere. It was normalcy that brought Hosea to Arthur the following morning with a request to join him on a trip into town for some supplies before they set off again. And because John was John, he too, wanted to come along. 

Arthur woke that morning feeling better for finally being through those woods. The smell and that prickly feeling were gone. Dutch hadn’t asked him anything more and conversation returned back to business and where they were going next. South. First south, then west. Where the law was more lenient, and the weather warm, and the area less dense with people. 

“And there,” Hosea said as the he, Arthur, ad John rode into town, “Is where Dutch says we’ll make our fortune.”

“That’s a big claim,” Arthur grins and Hosea returns it with a shrug.

“That’s a Dutch claim. And likely. We have a stretch of railroad and boomtowns for the picking,” he turns back towards John, loitering a bit between them on the dappled pony Dutch gifted him. “What’ll _you_ do with a fortune, kid?”

“I’d buy a fine house by a lake,” John announces. “With a stable full of thoroughbreds, and a lot of nice clothes. And I’d drink fancy wine all day and never work again.”

“That’s quite a dream,” Hosea says.

They ride on down a road thick with mud and discuss how to properly spend a fortune until they reach Cambridge.

It’s a whisper of a town. 

Arthur can see straight through it when they hitch outside of the general store. But it’s alive, enough. People moving in and out of buildings, up and down a wheel and hoof worn street, crossing precariously in the way of wagons. A man exits the store with a sack of corn and nearly collides into John as he goes. 

“_Entschuldigung_,” he says, mouth twisting into an apologetic grimace under his mustache. “Excuse me.”

“Busy little place,” John mutters, pulling his hair back into the leather cord he kept around his wrist. “No wonder they don’t got us on the sheriffs board, nobody would stop long enough to read it.”

“Suits me just fine,” Hosea says and hands him a slip of paper. “Now, John. Run on into the store and put an order in for these things up top. Get what needs getting on the bottom. Arthur and I are going to walk a bit.”

“What?! That’s not—“

“We ain’t having fun without you, kid, I promise. And we’ll be quick. Only running an errand for my missus.”

John looks between them a moment longer and relents with a pout, pocketing the list and the money Hosea hands him and disappearing inside.

When the door shuts behind him, Hosea and Arthur start up the street.

“Where are we going _really_?” Arthur asks, though Hosea is busy looking up at each building they pass with a searching determination and only answers when he finds what he’s looking for. 

“Here.”

They are stood outside a large home nestled between a bank and a tailors. A short yard filled with potted geraniums and a young apple tree separate the quiet almost misplaced house from the rest of the muddy street. A sign hangs just inside the gate:

**Dr. E. SCHUYLER**

_ **CAMBRIDGE, NEBRASKA** _

Arthur arches an eyebrow.

“Bessie’s sick?”

“We’re not here for Bessie.”

And it hits him. Like a cold slap. Twice as painful coming from Hosea.

And Hosea must see it. The inch he steps back. The half mix of hurt and confusion playing across his face. He reaches for Arthur’s arm and holds fast like he’s going to bolt. Tugs him just inside the gate out of the eye of the street and releases.

“It’s not what you’re thinking,” he says. “I know Dutch told you that he spoke to me. He was worried is all. But don’t tell him I told you that.”

“You think—?” When he speaks, his voice doesn’t sound his own. So much for that normalcy.

But Hosea’s shaking his head before the sentence can even finish.

“No,” he says. “No, I don’t. Not at all. Exhausted? Yes. Absolutely. Truth be told, I think that’s all this is. We’ve been running for some time and you never had time to...But sometimes we need that reassurance, Arthur. Something to put a name to and not seem so scary.”

Arthur can only look at him numbly. 

It seems a rather roundabout way of saying he doesn’t believe him.

In tandem, they go inside.

The house is neat and bright for having being between two buildings. The front sitting room has a long desk where a woman in a high collared dress sits, marking on some papers splayed in front of her. She looks up when Hosea and Arthur come in, hats in hand, and straightens when her eyes fall on Arthur.

“Good morning, gentlemen,” she says with a sweet smile. “You have an appointment?”

“No, ma’am. Our apologies,” Hosea says, his voice dripping with the charm that seemed to come to him so easy. “It all was rather unforeseen. Is the doctor very busy today?”

“Oh no, sir. No. He will be glad to see you,” she stands and motions to the small loveseat and chairs arranged with respectable distance from each other against the opposite wall. “Please, make yourselves comfortable. I’ll be only a moment.”

It seems an impossible task. 

Arthur takes the loveseat, fitfully mussing around his hat. Hosea drops beside him.

When they are alone, Hosea turns on Arthur, nudging him in the ribs.

“You’ll put a crease in your brim if you don’t quit,” he hisses.

“Sorry.”

“I’m not going to leave you alone. If you’ll have me...”

“Yes.”

“Good,” Hosea says giving him a reassuring smile. Arthur tries to return it. It doesn’t quite reach his eyes.

“Was this Dutch’s idea?”

“No. It was mine. Why, too much?”

Arthur huffs a laugh and the woman returns.

“Dr. Schuyler will see you,” she says. 

With Hosea’s hand at his shoulder, Arthur stands and follows the woman into the other room.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> So, this whole thing was a part of a series which was why it ends ...”drifty” like that.
> 
> Anyway, so yeah. I love the idea of Low Honor and High Honor Arthur existing at the same time, and this was probably my favorite story within the series. Thanks for reading it and commenting and letting me share with y’all 🌻

_Sometimes they fought.   
_

_Loud and ruthless. It was usually about his lifestyle.   
_

_She had said she could accept it. But sometimes she threw it back in his face like it were all his fault. Like he had a choice. He could count cards. Could count his way into an early retirement if he wanted, but he hadn’t mastered how to switch his hand entire. He didn’t think he ever could. No matter how bad it was. _

_She saw it a different way._

_ She saw it like there was always a way. Somehow. She had been a preachers daughter though. And Arthur thought maybe that kind of hope was just instilled in her._

_They never even apologized. Just kind of made up in their own silent way. Usually with one asking if the other wanted something to eat or little thoughtful gifts.   
_

_She hands him a knotted handkerchief that day. Deep blue with his initials embroidered at the top. There’s a weight inside and he looks up at her with a smile._

_“I don’t like it when you leave on a bad note,” she explains, fingering around her collar. “Open it.”_

_Once the knot is loose, the handkerchief opens like a flower. In the middle is a pendant. A little cross made out of what looks like ivory. Or smooth wood. It’s bound by a cord and knotted with enough length to give someone room to wear around their neck. He picks it up gently and turns it over in his palm, admiring the way the sun catches it almost as though it were made of porcelain. _

_“You made this?” He breathes, and Eliza laughs, shaking her head._

_“No, I don’t know who made it. It was a gift from papa a long time ago. It’s antler.”_

_“Someone knows their craft.”_

_“Oh, I’d say,” she agrees. “Papa gave it to me before he died. I don’t know about luck charms, but I think that has a way of making you feel...good. Safe, kind of. You know?” _

_“I can’t take this from you.”_

_“Please. You need it more than I do.”_

_They had parted ways and it had been the last time he’d seen her._

_He never wears the pendant. It’d feel like an insult in a way he couldn’t really explain to anyone. Not even himself._

_He keeps it in the bottom of his bag._

Dr. Schuylers office was a small room.   


A bit larger than any Arthur was used to, but considerably smaller than the room they had just been waiting in. It had several bookshelves and a desk angled in a corner near a window in the back of the room. A few feet away from this desk was a chair and a stool. Arthur eyed the chair warily, and then turned to meet this doctor.

“Good morning,” Dr. Schuyler said, extending a hand in turn to each of them. And added as though in near verbatim of the woman in the sitting room, “Please, have a seat.”

Arthur takes the chair beside the stool and Hosea settles on the window sill, face pointedly blank though when he catches Arthur’s eyes he gives him a half smile. 

_There’s nothing wrong_, said the smile. _All is well._

There was hoping.

“What brings you in today?” 

“I’ve been seeing things,” Arthur begins. Hosea adjusts himself on the sill and suddenly Arthur feels a foreign sort of self consciousness. He doesn’t know if he wants him there anymore. “Things that ain’t exactly there....I mean.”

It feels weird to say out loud. Better held in his head. But this was the doctors business, he figures. The man seems unfazed, sitting on the stool just opposite of him and writing in a little leather book.

“About how long have you been seeing this?”

“Going on a year and a half now.”

The doctor looks up. “Quite some time, then.”

“I was busy with work. Tight on time. Money.”

“I understand,” the doctor looks back down at his book. “What is it exactly that you’re seeing?”

“It’s always a man. And a dog.”

“Any headaches or any sudden head trauma?”

“No.”

“Any medicine?”

“No.”

“Drink any stagnant water, or bad food?”

“No.”

“Any er..._habits_, that might lead you to seeing these things?”

“Not...all the time. Just some times. Special times.”

“Socially.”

“Yeah. Socially.”

The doctor nods. Not once lifting a hand from that little book.

“And has anything recently happened that might’ve really shaken you up?”

Arthur hesitates a beat too long and the doctor looks up again.

“And by this I mean, stressful sorts of things,” he says softly. “I sometimes get the former soldier or two, here. I hear a lot of what you describe from them. Seeing old friends or hearing things from back then.”

“No, I wasn’t ever in the war or anything,” Arthur says. “But my...my lady. She was robbed while I was away for work. She didn’t make it. Her or my son. It’s not a war but...”

“Oh no,” Dr. Schuyler says, eyebrows pinching and journal near forgotten. “I’m sorry for it, sir.”

“Thank you. It’s alright.”

“Have you been sleeping well?”

“On and off. I get enough.”

“Do you think you’ve given yourself time to mourn?”

“To _what_?”

“To mourn. To grieve.”

“Well...sure. I did. I’m better now.” 

The doctor hums. Looks over at Hosea and the two seem to have a two second silent conversation before the doctor stands and checks Arthur physically. And when that’s done, he returns to his little book and writes some more things down, consults a bigger book, and in the course of about twenty minutes or so, he nods to himself and looks up.

“There’s physically nothing wrong,” he declares. “And for all accounts and purposes, you’re in perfect health. But what I am worried for is what you told me about your family, sir. I don’t think you’ve given yourself the time.”

Hosea grunts an agreement and Arthur never felt more betrayed.

“That can affect sleep, you know. And this—_combined_—may be why your seeing things that aren’t there. And why perhaps it’s always the same thing.”

It isn’t satisfying. 

The doctor gives him a bottle of something to help him sleep, and once everything is done and paid for, Arthur and Hosea make the trek back down the street to John and the general store in silence. 

“Well? It’s what I told you, isn’t it?” Hosea asks.

“I don’t know.”

“Tonight, if you see him again, just think about what the doctor said,” as they approach, they spot John sitting on the front of the store. Several packages and a bag arranged around him while he props his chin on a fist and surveys the street lazily. “It’s not really there.”

Later that night, he has a nightmare.

He’s standing at the shore of a pond. It’s familiar, and it strikes him immediately after, where he is. It’s twilight or thereabouts. Fireflies bob along the surface like a fleet of ships lost at sea, and sky is glowing pink on the horizon and a rich blue-black above him. 

He doesn’t know why, but he steps closer to the pond. And closer still until he can bend over and stare at his reflection. When he does, he finds he’s not alone. 

Beside him stands a dark gray coyote. It bares it’s teeth in a silent snarl, and before he’s bitten, he jerks awake.

* * *

The next day, Arthur accompanies John back into town to pick up the things they had put in to order.   


He hadn’t taken the sleeping aid the doctor gave him that previous night and woke groggy, touchy, and with an insufferable crick in his neck. He didn’t _not_ take the medicine because he didn’t want to sleep, but because he was doing just fine with the sleep he was getting.   


He was a “functioning member” as Dutch would say. He could still plan and shoot and ride. And besides. He didn’t know what all was in that medicine anyways and he wasn’t sure who he’d be for taking it. He wasn’t too fond of mysteries or surprises. So he left it untouched.

“Where did you and Hosea go when I was putting in the orders?” John asks when they’re far enough away from camp that their only company is a group of crows cawing somewhere above them. They had been riding quiet and Arthur had prayed it’d stay that way. But John had other ideas.

“No where,” says Arthur.

It’s dropped.

When they reach the store, the owner is standing on the porch, hands tucked under the arms of his jacket and watching the road warily as though he were half expecting something to tear right down the middle. It’s early enough that not many people are out yet, though there’s a couple of men loading up a cart with big barrels and talking while they worked. They pay no attention to the two when they come down the road, and neither does the shop owner. 

“Mr. Harding,” John says in greeting and the owner jumps a bit, turning towards the two as they approach. “Morning to you.”

“Mr. Matthews,” the shopkeeper nods, and Arthur scoffs. “I’m...in a bit of a bind.” And here his eyes flick over to Arthur, before falling back to John. “That salt hasn’t come in yet. I got word it’ll be expected tomorrow.”

“The canned goods too?”

“No. Those are in. It’s just that salt.”

“Refund us the salt and we’ll keep the others,” Arthur says and they follow the shopkeeper inside. The business is done and they take their things and it’s outside at their horses that John accosts him.

“We needed that salt,” he hisses. “That meat won’t cure itself, we don’t have the time to—“

“Don’t you start telling me what we have and don’t have the time for. We don’t have time for sittin’ here on our hands waiting for some _damned_ salt, now let’s go.”

“Dutch is gonna be pissed.”

“Yeah, well. He’s been pissed before and he’ll be pissed plenty of times comin’ just...let me explain it, alright?”

John narrows his eyes and sucks his cheeks in, in response and keeps quiet the rest of the ride back. All up until they reach the point of the road where the neatly trodden path turns loose and bumpy. And there John perks up a bit and says, “The first time we came through this way, I seen a house through the trees. I don’t think it’s anybody’s.”

“And what makes you think that?” Arthur asks.

“I don’t know. Just a feelin’.”

“Feelin’ don’t mean anything. Proof does.”

“Hosea says feelin’ can mean a helluva lot.”

Arthur rolls his eyes. Of _course_ he would remember that to use whenever it struck him. 

John glances over his shoulder when Arthur doesn’t respond, and the eldest sighs, waving a hand flippantly.

“Just...a quick look. Alright?”

The cabin sits tucked among evergreens well out of the way of the road.

Along it’s right side, the ground was overturned, but barren. Leaves littering the little clearing and giving it an air of neglect. Arthur and John dismount some ways from the house in the safety of bushes and walk the rest of the way on the balls of their feet.Breath coming in the form of barely there puffs of steam. As though at any moment the door would swing open and the owner would walk out and catch them in the act of creeping around their property like a couple of thieves.   


Which brought Arthur to his next question.

“How did you even _see_ this place?”

“There was a pelt or somethin’,” John says in a half whisper. “On that line over there, see? I figured a hunter might’ve passed this way...”

“Well it ain’t there now...”

“No. It ain’t.”

“So this place isn’t so abandoned after all, is it?”

Johns cheeks darken. He’s opening his mouth with a quip at the ready when he suddenly freezes midstride, nose wrinkling.

“Do you...smell that?”

Arthur takes a deep breath. 

Nearly choked on it. 

On the breeze a faint whisper of something earthy and old. 

Not quite the smell of a forest damp with rain and leaves but something else entirely. Like a curio shop. Or an old book.

The smell _he_ had.

_The Man and Dog were somewhere nearby._

But for the first time, he wasn’t the only one.   


John smelled it too. 

And in a corner of his mind he wondered if that also meant John could _see_ him too. 

He swallows that thought and shivers. 

“Let’s go, there’s nothing here.”

“You said a quick look and we ain’t looked yet!”

“I’m starting to think,” Arthur says slowly. “You have a motive to being here.”

But John only gives him a decidedly impish grin and marches across the overturned earth with the impudent, self confident gait of most his age.

Arthur wondered if he were that terrible at sixteen. Thinks maybe he was. Thinks it’s better left foggy in his memory and follows John up to the house.

“It’s empty,” John says. “And the back door is open.”

The inside of the cabin, whether it was occupied or not, had the same air of chaos as the outside. 

Blankets lay strewn across a little bed in the corner, the window darkened with grime and smoke from a fireplace that looked like it hadn’t had a proper sweeping since it was built. 

On the table, an old newspaper sat discarded. A little whittling knife with a handsome pine handle sat almost forgotten, surrounded by a ring of dust. It was small enough to use for sharpening pencils or fussing around wood with. Arthur studies it, and decides it’s better kept with someone who will put it to use instead of sitting in the cabin collecting dirt for all eternity. He wipes it clean with the fold of his sleeve and pockets it.

“Look!” John says from across the room. “Just what I figured. See?”

He’s holding up a bag no bigger than a fist, stepping over a toppled chair to open it under Arthur’s eye.

“Salt,” he says. “Not a lot. But enough to not go back empty handed.”

“So you _did_ have a motive, huh.”

“It worked didn’t it?” John said, green eyes searching Arthur’s face. “Would you have done it?”

“What would it matter if I would’ve?” 

And John blinks quickly, looking away as though pulled brusquely from a trance. Rolling his eyes and refastening the bag.

“Well, lets get back then.”

The smell is stronger when they exit the cabin.

Stronger as they ride back up the trail.

“Whatever you’re wearing,” John shouts back at him. “It smells like an old man.”

Arthur shivers. Glances over his shoulder. He thinks he sees something between the trees, but can’t quite make it out.

“I’ll race you back, Marston. Winner doesn’t have to chop the firewood.”

He lets John win.

* * *

He can’t sleep.

He lies on his back behind the privacy of his tent flap, turning the knife over in his hand. And when he’s through with that, he tucks it under his discarded jacket and reads a bit from the book Bessie loaned him in the dim light of his lantern.   


He gets a chapter or two in and loses focus. Reads the same paragraph maybe three times and ignores that little corner of his brain begging for sleep. So he abandons the book and turns to the little label on that sleeping aid the doctor gave him. And it’s while he’s studying it that he first hears it. 

Hears John. 

Talking in his sleep or something. Too low to make out.

He’s returning the bottle to its spot by the book when what was a quiet murmur turns into a panicked shout and he’s bolting upright quicker than his head can keep up.

“_Arthur_!” John shrieks again into the night. The stillness that settled before suddenly broken by something unseen.

Arthur grabs the knife and half runs half trips out of the tent, blinking around the dark campsite between patches of color, almost flinching when a dark, John shaped figure suddenly barrels towards him, taking his arm in a vice grip.

“Are you _stupid_?!” He’s spluttering between shaky breaths. “Didn’t you see that...that...”

“What’s going on?” Dutch’s voice bellows from the other side of the remains of their fire. A glow of light comes to life and grows. Lantern in one hand and revolver in the other, their leader marches toward them with Hosea at his heels. And suddenly Arthur realizes that among all of them, save for John in his clammy, shaky grip, he’s the only one without a suitable weapon for whatever—or whoever—it was. 

“I saw Arthur walking along the river,” John says, voice raising an octave. “And I asked him where he was going and he said, ‘No where, John,’ but it...it didn’t even _sound_ like him. Like he was talking in a can or somethin’. And then I saw this coyote comin’ up on him and I shouted b-because...he didn’t even move he...and then...”

It hits John as suddenly as it hits the rest of them. Arthur’s arm is released. The youngest of their party taking two steps back and studying him like it was the first time he saw him.

“How...how did you get back _here _from all the way down_ there_?”

A million questions fill Arthur’s head to the point of being painful. 

A million questions and something that distinctly feels like relief.   


_You see_? He wants to scream. _It’s not me. It’s not just me, now. I’m not making it up. I’m not the only one._

But beyond that relief, horror. Something that tastes a bit like fear. Because now it’s _not_ just him. 

And now he _wasn’t_ the only one. 

The only thing that comes out, however, half whispered in the ringing silence is, “what the hell is going on?”

Dutch looks half wild. 

He’s angry now. 

Hosea too, though his is a quieter sort. A simmering sort, directed into the tense muscles running along his neck. John silently sidles back to Arthur and he’s secretly glad _someone_ is there.

“I don’t know,” Dutch says. “I don’t know. But I _do_ know that not a single person is to leave this camp without my knowing or without another person with them. Is that understood?”

It’s understood without anyone having to say it. 

None move right away from the light of Dutch’s lantern. As though heading off into the dark to their own quarters was suddenly too far and too damn vulnerable. Arthur didn’t blame them. Who knew, after all, a ghost would test their camaraderie...

John says, “Can I stay with y—“

“Yes,” Arthur says.

* * *

The next morning before the sun rises, Arthur wakes, dresses quickly in the dark, grabs the knife, and goes as quietly as he can to Harper.

He doesn’t know if it’s actually morning.   


It could still be the middle of the night for all he knows, but he feels like it’s morning. 

He had blindly felt around his satchel before he left the tent. Half in a dream and half in a nightmare. And when his hand found the pendant, he pulled it free and tucked it in his pocket.

John, who he had forgotten was even in the tent with him, had jerked awake from under a mound of blankets at the sound of him dropping his bag back in its spot near the flap.

“Where are you going?” He asked, voice still thick with sleep.

“Just out,” Arthur says. “Go back to sleep.”

“No. I’m going with you.”

“Dutch said no leaving the camp.” It’s a weak argument considering he was doing just that. But John is already pushing himself upright, tugging a jacket on while still sitting in a nest of blankets.

“He also said no going anywhere alone,” he says. “I’m going with you.”

It’s how they end up back at that cabin, crouching in the same plot of overturned dirt they walked through the day prior and watching the house for any sign of movement within. There’s a horse hitched on the opposite side of the house now. John and Arthur share a look, but otherwise don’t comment. That smell was back. Fainter. But there. John shifts beside him, knees popping loud enough to make them both wince.

“Why are we back here?” He whispers, around a chorus of crickets. “You saw some more things we need?”

“No. I’m returning this knife.”

“What? Why?”

“Testing something.”

“Testing _what_?”

Arthur responds with an abrupt finger to his lips, standing low enough to dart towards the back door and set the knife on the last step. Wasn’t exactly where he found it. But it was back home with it’s rightful owner.   


He glances back towards John. Confusion and questions he knows he’ll probably be cornered into answering written all across his face.   


But for now, he waits. 

Hand retreating from the handle of the knife and breath held, expectantly in his chest.

And like clockwork, he shows.

John gasps. Hands flying to clamp over his mouth in the same moment. Arthur turns towards the barely lit forest, squinting in the direction John was looking before he can make out the figure—_his_ figure—and the smaller shape of a large dog. Stationary and watching. 

The house. 

Him. 

_Them_.

“Arthur...” John says, voice quivering. “We need to go. _Now_.”

The figure doesn’t move. Doesn’t give any indication that it isn’t just some shared illusion between he and John. Arthur stands upright, looking at it fully. It seemed further away. Whether that confirmed his theory or disconfirmed it, he couldn’t give a solid answer. He’d have to repeat it during the day. But now, emboldened by something, he found he didn’t fear it. He wouldn’t run. It wouldn’t ruin him. It wouldn’t haunt him.

And as he and John make back towards the camp with a hundred and one unanswered questions, the thought repeats in his mind. And repeats. Like a mantra.

And repeats.

And repeats.

_It wouldn’t haunt him._

_It wouldn’t ruin him._

_That wasn’t him. _

**Author's Note:**

> [1] During the (US) Civil War, the country saw a bit of a movement centered around ghosts and the like.
> 
> (Source: https://gettysburgcompiler.org/2015/08/14/antebellum-spiritualism-and-the-civil-war/ )
> 
> We also have a famous example of seeing ones double around the same time period:
> 
> https://m.martianherald.com/9-mystifying-cases-doppelganger-phenomenon/page/6?
> 
> This story was loosely inspired by these things.


End file.
